Kata Juhász

Artist statement

Kata Juhász is a Budapest based dancer, choreographer, teacher and physician. She studied classical and Graham technique in Columbus, Ohio, then contemporary dance at the Centre National de la Danse Contemporaine (CNDC), Angers. She got the chance to participate in The Dance Web Scholarship Programme in Vienna. She toured internationally with the French-Hungarian Compagnie Pal Frenak for 8 years. In 2006 she launched her own company called Cie.ooops/Kata Juhasz.

In her stage work she often incorporates related arts, including: live music, video (documentary or abstract animation), spoken words, contemporary circus and multimedia. By doing so, she aims to open up a path for multichannel communication. This allows her to go beyond corporal or interpersonal issues. Instead, while still using the language of dance, she broaches sensitive social problems with the aim of initiating or simply contributing to a social dialogue. She regards site-specific performance as an opportunity for restructuring the cartesian relation of audience to the spectacle, and transform it into an immersive situation, where participants may interact. As a result of transferring contemporary dance from the traditional theatre space, her company has performed in cafés, classrooms, art galleries, fares, school gyms, cinemas and specific industrial sites. Her credo is that of keeping dance at eye level. Consequently therefore, she has recently developed a full repertory that is targeted at different age groups; from the youngest to the eldest of audiences.

She has been teaching dance since 1996 all over Hungary and in several other countries: Denmark, Germany, Poland, Japan, France, Russia and the USA.

She received the New York based CEC Artslink Independent Project Award 2017 for her work with the Link Vostok NGO in Minneapolis. In 2018 she was a resident artist in Philadelphia at the Bilateral Artist Exchange Program of Philadelphia Dance Project. In 2019 her company was on residency in Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium / Holstebro led by Eugenio Barba